


The Soldier and the Captain

by notsodarling



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsodarling/pseuds/notsodarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Captain’s shield leans against the wall across from his cot, and the Soldier spends too much time staring at it, trying to understand the Captain and who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soldier and the Captain

**Author's Note:**

> This movie has taken over my life, and now I am just a mess of Bucky Barnes feels.

After the Soldier pulls the Captain out of the water, makes sure he’s breathing, and wades back into the water. He remembers the shield, remembers the Captain dropping it into the water, recalls how the Captain had refused to fight back - had called them _friends_. The Soldier doesn’t understand why he feels he has to be the one to retrieve the shield, it’s not his mission, but there is a voice inside of him telling him it’s important, that the Captain will need his shield back. So the Soldier ignores the pain in his shoulder, and dives back into the murky water of the river, searching out the red, white and blue.

The Soldier knows of the local bases, checkpoints and safe houses for during his missions. He stakes them out, one by one, until he discovers an abandoned one, untouched for perhaps months. It is unlikely anyone will come looking for him. There had been no extraction plan from the fight with the Captain, and the Soldier had failed his mission. Inside he finds civilian clothes, food rations, and a cot to sleep on. He sheds his armored clothes - he doesn’t need them while he tries to blend in. The Captain’s shield leans against the wall across from his cot, and the Soldier spends too much time staring at it, trying to understand the Captain and who he is.

The Soldier hears of the museum with the exhibit about the Captain. In his civilian clothes, he is able to slip in unnoticed, metal arm hidden underneath a jacket, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. This is reconnaissance, he is gathering intel. The exhibit is loud, and full of people, but the Soldier pushes onward. He stands in front of a mural of seven men, one of the them the Captain. To the right of the Captain is the man who looks like him, the man with his face, the one they call James Buchanan Barnes - Bucky. There are paintings on the wall, photographs and recorded footage playing on screens throughout the exhibit. There is a glass memorial to James Buchanan Barnes, detailing his friendship with Steve Rogers, his time in the army, and how he died in 1944 after falling from a train while on a mission against Hydra.

The Soldier stares at the memorial, allowing his mind to piece together what he’s been told. He knows that the Captain had called him Bucky, had said they were friends, that they knew each other their whole lives. There had been a line the Captain had used, a phrase that had caused something inside the Soldier to crack open that day on the helicarrier - _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line_ \- but there’s no mention of that here, and the Soldier determines it to be something the two men shared in private, something they’d held close. If the Captain was telling the truth, and the Soldier is in fact James Buchanan Barnes, then how did he survive the fall that was supposed to have killed him?

How can the Soldier be the same man as James Buchanan Barnes, if that man died in 1944? The Soldier is not a person, he is an asset. He receives his orders, his mission, the targets ,and carries them out before reporting back to his superiors. James Buchanan Barnes was a person with a life, someone who wa loved and admired by Steve Rogers. Training has taught the Soldier how to read people’s emotions, to determine if someone is close to a target, if they will be a liability to the mission and need to be eliminated as well as to not pose a threat in the future.

The Soldier understands that James Buchanan Barnes and Steve Rogers are each other’s weakness.

If the Soldier is James Buchanan Barnes, and he did not in fact die in 1944 from a fall off a train in the Alps, then he has spent the last seventy years being controlled and used by others. His mind would have needed to be wiped, his captors would have needed control over him, would have tried to keep him from remembering his past, from remembering the Captain. The Soldier thinks of the cryo tank, thinks of the cold and understands that if the ice is how the Captain survived, perhaps it is how he did as well.

Standing in the museum, in front of the memorial, the Soldier makes a decision. He will seek out the Captain. He will ask for the Captain’s help. Because the Soldier wants to remember. But first, the Soldier gives himself his own mission, makes his own choice. He decides that he is going to find out what happened to James Buchanan Barnes. He is going to find the people that made him into the Soldier, made him forget his life before, made him forget the Captain, and he is going to make them pay for what they have done.


End file.
